November 16, 2009

Standing in the Rose Garden on November 7th, President Barack Obama celebrated the passage of the House health care bill claiming: "The Affordable Health Care for America Act is a piece of legislation that will provide stability and security for Americans who have insurance; quality, affordable options for those who don't; and bring down the cost of health care for families, businesses, and our government, while strengthening the financial health of Medicare."

Quite a bold statement if true. But a report released Friday by the non-partisan and independent Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency in charge of running Medicare and Medicaid, blows the lid off of every one of Obama's claims. All of the following quotes are from the report itself:

Reacting in part to Friday's CMS report, Robert J. Samuelson writes in today's Washington Post:

The disconnect between what President Obama says and what he's doing is so glaring that most people could not abide it. The president, his advisers and allies have no trouble. But reconciling blatantly contradictory objectives requires them to engage in willful self-deception, public dishonesty, or both.

Commenting on President Barack Obama's meeting with Emperor Akihito of Japan, an academic with expertise about the Japanese Empire tells ABC News: "The bow as he performed did not just display weakness in Red State terms, but evoked weakness in Japanese terms….The last thing the Japanese want or need is a weak looking American president and, again, in all ways, he unintentionally played that part."

Thanks to conservatives in Congress, President Obama has been "hobbled" in his search for a global warming treaty.

The government paid more than $47 billion in questionable Medicare claims including medical treatment showing little relation to a patient's condition, wasting taxpayer money at a rate nearly three times that of the previous year.